Modern Settings and Modern Academic Study

Mainstreaming of Esoteric and Mystical Studies in World Academia

THERE IS MUCH MORE ACADEMIC STUDY OF MYSTICISM AND THE PARANORMAL THEN PEOPLE APPRECIATE

“We have here recorded thousands of mainstream academic studies of mysticism and spirituality in numerous languages around the world. The implication is that when [some scientists] state that anyone interested in religion today is most likely “wacko,” they are simply unaware of the body of this work…”

[Explore the breadth of academic and medical study of mysticism and paranormal states in TCIA]

It Takes Big Minds to See Big Pictures

What People Actually Believe about the Spirit World

HERE ARE EXTENSIVE STATISTICS ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE SAY THEY EXPERIENCE REGARDING THE SPIRIT WORLD AND PARANORMAL

“Explore a mass of data and statistics of what people report worldwide about experiences of a spirit world, or other realms; you will be surprised at what they say.”

[Explore in TCIA international statistics on what people say their experience with regard to spirit realms and the paranormal]

Who Goes to Whose Heaven or Whose Hell?

EVER WONDER ABOUT THE CRITERIA FOR GOING TO HEAVEN AND HELL?

“For those who believe the simplified, popular view of the spirit realms as just heaven and hell, further interesting questions arise. Who will go to whose heaven and whose hell?”

[Read in TCIA what people worldwide think and believe about heaven and hell]

Better than Heaven and Hell

WHAT CAN MODERN HUMANITY LEARN FROM OUR HISTORICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT A SPIRIT REALM?

“The millennially deeper mystical teachings of all the world‘s religions are far more complex than simply the notion of heaven and hell, and it’s here that the real bounty of wisdom lies when it comes to modern humankind. With six-sevenths of our world population believing in some form of the magic-mythic paradigm, it’s extremely unlikely the way forward will be to discard them. Rather, there will need to be further integration of these understandings with those of modern science and psychology.”

[Explore in TCIA what a holistic worldview might understand about existence of spirit realms and their possible relationship to dimensions explored in science by quantum physics and string theory’s proposal of “parallel universes”]

THE SPIRIT REALMS IN EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE

IS THERE A WAY TO UNDERSTAND HOW CONSCIOUSNESS MAY WORK?

“It may be helpful to provide an experiential understanding of the spirit world that just might make sense.”

[Read TCIA’s easy to understand, and spiritual and scientifically sound, view of how consciousness may actually work; explore it and make your own assessment]

The Levels of Experience We Have Every Day

Some Enchanted Evening

WHAT ARE THE EXPERIENCES OF CONSCIOUSNESS COMMON TO EVERY ONE OF US?

“No doubt we all remember poignant sacred events in our lives, such as when we first met a lover or said goodbye to a loved one at the moment of death. When those who aren’t religious recall such moments, they touch the same ground as religious people. Most of us go to movies, read books, dance or observe dance, listen to music, or fashion art of all kinds in order to touch upon these moments that we all consider precious. No matter whether we are religious or not, the word “sacred” doesn’t sound out of place when attached to such moments of common experience.”

[Read in TCIA about the variety of experiences reported by all persons worldwide that testify to simultaneous dimensions of experience we all have; you’ll be surprised to find these in some of our most popular song lyrics!]

A Collective View

HOW DO WE SUMMARIZE THE BREADTH OF THIS HUMAN EXPERIENCE?

“The religious traditions all teach that there’s a shared collective field of consciousness that encompasses the earthbound and the spiritual realms. The physicist Roger Penrose aptly calls this wider collective the “quantum plenum” (as in a plenary session at a conference where all the attendees gather), contrasting it to the world of an individual phenomenon. This collective hosts the interplay of the most cosmically large and the most cosmically small—a grand stage indeed. …There’s interaction involving communication in the form of reaching in and reaching out and, reportedly, coming and going…. The reasons humans believe in this wider collective consciousness vary.”

[Explore in TCIA how the most conscientious people on both sides of the argument about spirit realms and the paranormal help can us come to a possibly healthy holistic view of it all; read about scientists who have change their minds]

Honest Skepticism from Both Sides

CAN WE LEARN FURTHER FROM THE FACT THAT BOTH SIDES ARE SKEPTICAL?

“There are several popular jokes that reveal the spectrum of this debate. One holds that while everyone should have an open mind, it shouldn’t be so open that one’s brains fall out. Another makes fun of the tendency for committed skeptics to dismiss all non-conventional experiences outright, which they may do either because of their academic training or for perhaps deeply rooted psychological reasons. In this joke a skeptic at a skeptics’ convention greets another skeptic with the words, “I don’t believe we’ve met,” only to be answered with the reply, “I don’t believe that you don’t believe that we’ve not met.”

[Read more in TCIA about the dialogue, and even arguments, between those who do and don’t believe in these other dimensions, especially the so-called “skeptics community” and “debunkers”]

If Real, How Is the Spirit World Structured?

Is it Actual Structures or Just Our Lens?

HOW IS THE SPIRIT WORLD, IF REAL, STRUCTURED?

“The question contains the same paradoxes encountered when we ask how our mind is structured. Such questions carry all the enigma of how a quantum field might work or the layer upon layer vibratory world predicted by string theory. M-theory, which has grown out of string theory, also predicts a multiverse built on eleven dimensions, with universes that might all be close to us, even in the room in which you are reading this book. These universes wouldn’t usually touch each other because of the way the strings are attached. Science is only at the initial stage of proposing how such a multiverse might work.”

[Explore in TCIA the narratives of the Great Wisdom Traditions about how the spirit realms are structured and how these may relate to dimensions cutting edge science is talking about]

Narratives of Spiritual, Astral, and Subtle Bodies Aren’t Going Away

WHAT HAS OUR HISTORY REPORTED ABOUT THESE REALMS?

“In nearly all esoteric, mystical, or occult teachings, there’s a recognition of a “soul” or “spirit”—some kind of body in the subtle realms—that underlies the physical body….

“Nearly all views of the spirit realms as interactive are based on these notions of countless spirits or souls. It’s this soul or spirit body with which the shaman or medium communicates, and there exists a vast literature about work in the spirit realms, full of fantastic accounts of astral traveling and celestial happenings. They are the accounts of individual adepts from across the world’s many spiritual traditions, often reflecting and paralleling the larger sagas of those peoples, and including descriptions of the gods and spirit entities of their sacred texts.”

[Inform yourself in TCIA about the world’s heritages of narratives about spirit realms]

Descriptions of the Spirit Body

WHAT DOES HUMAN HISTORY REPORT ABOUT THE “SPIRIT BODY” AND IS IT REAL?

“If we consider the esoteric and mystery schools, details of the human subtle, spirit, or energy body have been described by nearly every spiritual tradition. Sometimes these depictions are as complex and meticulous as medical descriptions of the physical body’s sensory systems….

The idea of the spirit, subtle, energy, or astral body was also a staple of the teachings of the widely popular Theosophical Society of the 18th and 19th century spiritualist movements. People were drawn to these teachings because they seemed to make some sense of what so many experienced in their daily lives—such as intuition, instinct, and the proverbial “hunch.” These experiences led to our wide use of the term “sixth sense.” “

[Read detailed accounts in TCIA of how the world’s traditions have understood the “spirit body”]

Spirit Body, East and West

HOW UNIVERSAL IS THE STORY ABOUT A “SPIRIT BODY”?

“In eastern traditions, the subtle body is generally seen as any number of etheric coverings, layers, sheaths, or energy levels. The emphasis in these traditions is on using these energy levels or sheaths in the work of unconditional love and service, thus manifesting the traits that typify the divine nature in these traditions. …

This concept is paralleled in modern Western esoteric understanding, mostly because pioneers in those traditions either drew their syntheses from Eastern sources or because, as with some of the ancient Greek mystery schools, they independently derived understandings quite similar to those in the East….

These ideas are so widespread that they dominate our popular notions of souls, spirits, and ghosts. While the higher self is called to merge with all that’s good in heaven—“let earth and heaven combine, angels and men agree” (Charles Wesley)—the lower elements bound to lust and passion remain earthbound as the common ghost or spook—as witnessed in such television programs as Moonlight in Europe and True Blood or The Vampire Diaries in the United States.”

[Explore in TCIA how the tradition’s views of the spirit body relate to spiritual phenomena both on earth and in the reported spirit realms]

Stories of Spirit Levels, Planes, and Realms

WHAT ABOUT THE LEVELS OF THE PURPORTED SPIRIT WORLD?

“Moving beyond the individual, what does the spirit realm look like in the collective? If they still exist in some form, where are all these celestial places and all these people who have come and gone from the earth since our history began?….

Nearly all the narratives from our religious, spiritual, and esoteric traditions address this mystery by referring to multiple levels, planes, or realms within the spirit world….

Just as modern physics distinguishes the actions of the quantum field as simultaneously involving “all of it” (the “quantum plenum”) and each individual phenomenon, most of the world’s spiritual traditions claim their spiritual planes are contained in that nondual dimension of oneness that scientists say held the entire universe in a singularity prior to the Big Bang.”

[Read in TCIA about how the world’s traditions understand the structure of the reported spirit world and how these parallel the new science’s views of multiple dimensions]

Nondual Plane and Archetypal or Shamanic Plane

IF YOU’VE HEARD PEOPLE USE THE TERMS “NONDUAL” AND “SHAMANIC AND ARCHETYPAL PLANE” THIS WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND

“Consciousness and the spiritual realms are divided between a so-called “nondual” realm in which all is one and the realms in which things are experienced as happening, often referred to as shamanic or archetypal realms. In the singularity of science or the oneness of a nondual realm (in which westerners would consider everything united with “God”), nothing is actually experienced as happening, since there’s no separation or differentiation of any kind—no separate observer to observe.
This state is also reported in the deepest spiritual experience or highest spiritual states recorded in the world’s spiritual traditions….”

[Explore the explanations of “nondual” versus “shamanic and archetypal” in TCIA]

The Problem of Experience Chasing

IS CHASING MORE AND MORE EXPERIENCES REALLY SOUND SPIRITUALITY?

“Those who experience only the dimensions in which things appear to be happening often think that this is all there is. Thus a drama develops around spiritual experiences that lacks a simultaneous understanding of that which is eternally resting in unity and peace at the same time.”

Spirit Realms in the Great Traditions

HOW DOES COMMUNICATION WORK IN THE SPIRIT WORLD?

“Brother Teasdale explained that it’s easy to understand the notion of this ethereal communication by comparing how images appear in two schools of art: impressionism and symbolism.”

[Read explanations in TCIA about how communication goes on in the subtle realms and how these help us understand many reports of the paranormal]

Higher Realms, East and West

READ IN TCIA ABOUT HISTORY’S NARRATIVES OF THE HIGHER REALMS

“These depictions of the realms of spirit interaction, featuring epic legacies among the celestial cast of heavenly characters, vary only in the times they reflect—be they the narratives of indigenous peoples and their shamans, the epic narratives of the many sacred texts, the artistic images of many periods, and even current popular narratives such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Harry Potter. These demonstrate how powerful the “magic-mythic” lens still remains across humanity….”

[Explore the views, east and west, of the realms of the spirit world in TCIA]

The Spirit World Is Probably Already Interspiritual

IS THE SPIRIT WORLD ALREADY INHABITED BY PEOPLE FROM ALL THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS, PAST AND PRESENT?

“When we consider modern views of consciousness from both religious and scientific viewpoints and meld these with the perennial reports of the spirit realms, we arrive at some evocative insights.”

[Read further in TCIA about how the spirit realms might already be structured and what is going on there]

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

SOME OF THE HARD QUESTIONS ABOUT MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

“In light of human history, perhaps the last characteristic is the most tantalizing. We find ourselves, 10,000 years into civilization, surrounded by stories and narratives that are deeply entrenched in who and what we are. Since spiritual experience is out of the realm of ordinary experience, in a sense it’s in the same general category as mental illness. In fact, brain research shows that many of the same areas of the brain are activated by both of these abnormal experiences! What then accounts for the fact that spiritual experience can be profoundly life changing and produce individuals of exceptional ethical and behavioral acumen, while mental illness can lead to total breakdown and incapacity? The stark contrast of these two results raises deep questions about our human experience of the subtle realms.”

[Read more in TCIA about the territory modern spiritual and science will need to explore together to have some coherent understanding of the subtle realms and how humanity experiences them]

What Validates the Claims of Mystical Experience?

Spirituality and Our Current Evolutionary Threshold

HOW IS MODERN CUTTING EDGE SCIENCE LOOKING AT HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS FUTURE?

“With the advent of advanced imaging and neuro measurement apparatus in recent decades, the neuroscientific community began to study the relationship of mind to observed religious experience. From this work has emerged the seminal field of the Cognitive Science of Religion.”

[Read more in TCIA about how humanity’s future exploration of the subtle realms, both by spiritual and science will be delicate but can be potentially very fruitful]

EARLY PIONEERS OF INTERSPIRITUALITY

INTERSPIRITUALITY IS A HISTORICAL CULMINATION

“The emerging Interspiritual Age is a culmination of the visions of many throughout the world’s spiritual traditions and a new threshold in the development of the world’s spiritual paths, which are converging toward what Brother Teasdale called the possibility of a civilization based on the heart. Every tradition and path has played a part in this development.

Throughout history, even as great teachers, leaders, sages, and saints of the world’s religions were paving the paths of their traditions, another breed of visionary was already grasping the unity consciousness of a single path that’s inherent in them all.”

[Read TCIA’s details account of the development of interspirituality; you’ll be in for some surprises]

Early Pioneers

WHO HAVE BEEN THE PIONEERS OF INTERSPIRITUALITY?

“A recent compilation of pioneer figures in the world’s interspiritual heritage included 42 pivotal individuals. In many cases these are individuals who wouldn’t have come to prominence were interspirituality not gaining visibility as part of the wider phenomena of globalization and multiculturalism.”

[Read TCIA’s accounts of important interspiritual pioneers; you’ll recognize some, but not all]

WHO WERE THE PIONEERS IN THE EAST?

[Read TCIA’s account of interspiritual pioneers across the eastern religions; many will be new to you but not all]

Early Western Interspiritual Pioneers

WHO WERE THE PIONEERS IN THE WEST?

“The number of interspiritual pioneers in the West is no less substantial,…” There were also outspoken interreligious Protestants…. Roman Catholic champions of interspirituality are perhaps among the most well known in the West… This unfolding was truly a cosmopolitan affair.”

[Read TCIA’s accounts of western interspiritual pioneers; you’ll be surprised at the number of religious denominations they represented—Protestant and Catholic]

Celebrities Light the Way

MANY CELEBRITIES HAVE VOICED VALUES THAT POINT TOWARD INTERSPIRITUALITY

“In recent decades, the world has been blessed with a body of popular media that, without many realizing it, widely disseminates the elements of the interspiritual vision.

[Read in TCIA how international celebrities, religious and otherwise, by voice a universal views of religions, and emphasizing the values of the heart, have helped foreshadow interspirituality]

Iconic Figures of East and West Usher in the Interspiritual Age

An Icon of the West: Scientist and Priest Teilhard de Chardin

Icons of the East: India’s Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

Read TCIA’s extensive accounts of the iconic lives of French Jesuit priest, mystic and famous scientist Teilhard de Chardin, India’s spiritual leader and independence leader Sri Aurobindo, and Aurobindo’s spiritual companion and co-leader The Mother

TOWARD UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS

CAN OVER 4000 MODERN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS FIND THEIR SENSE OF ONENESS?

“The leap from a few historical giants to an evolving idea that’s destined to reach its own high tide reflects nature’s own pyramid of development. … There’s an elegance to the fact that the evolution of consciousness is essentially the same process Darwin recognized in nature a century and a half ago. Process is eternal, its progression full of emerging results at each twist and turn. How curious that this reality, so self-evident in our daily lives, was somehow lost on modern humanity. The inherent hope and promise of the simple fact of the movement’s emergence has eluded our sense of destiny for some time, frozen in flatland by dogmas that emerge from culture.

While spirituality is dynamic, religion has claimed fixed outcomes. Such outcomes appeal to humanity’s still developing ape-like mind because they are easy to remember and thus easy to perpetuate. We see such manipulation in politics every day. Currently there are over 4,000 religious traditions. Historically the number has probably exceeded 60,000.”

[Read in TCIA about how, little by little, the world’s religious traditions have moved closer to each other through the spiritual discovery of the common roots in their mystical understandings]

200 Years and 2,000 Books

HOW DO YOU SUMMARIZE 200 YEARS AND 2000 BOOKS CLEARLY INDICATING THE COMING TOGETHER OF THE WORLD’S SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS?

“…there are at least two centuries of authors and pioneers, and at least 2,000 major books, that articulate this progression. If we look back, we can date the roots of this globalizing realization to the earliest straddling between the world’s Great Wisdom Traditions and the implications of modern science. This puts us squarely in the mid-to-latter 19th century when Darwin published his On the Origin of Species—right when our species was embarking on the epoch we have called The Fourth Great Advance.”

[Explore this history through TCIA’s detailed account of how the evolutionary consciousness movement (and, with it, interspirituality) congealed over two centuries and through thousands of ground-breaking books by consciousness pioneers]

Origins of the Evolutionary Consciousness Movement

Evolutionary Consciousness in Popular Culture

TAKE A WILD RIGHT THROUGH THE DECADES DEVELOPING THE EVOLUTIONARY VIEW OF REALITY FROM THE SCIENTISTS AND ARTISTS TO THE ROCK GROUPS THAT PURVEYED THIS VISION IN POP CULTURE

“The sheer variety and number of developments in academic fields around the world, more and more finely grained, elaborated the meaning and implications of a world propelling itself toward multiple perspectives and holistic integration.”

[Read TCIA’s fascinating accounts of how many of our icons of pop culture, knowingly or unknowingly, brought eastern and western understanding together and into the collective global psyche]

Coming of Age in the Holistic Era

Selected Developments During the Emerging Holistic Epoch

A HISTORY OF OUR INTEGRATIVE AND HOLISTIC ERAS

Read in TCIA how this has progressed with Institutions and Organizations, Centers and Associations, Publications and Media, Seminal World Conferences, New Emergent Paradigms, Integral Theories, Holistic Health and Healing and more….

The Evolutionary Consciousness Movement Today

From Shamans to Scientists

Read detailed accounts in TCIA about our current evolutionary consciousness movement that is developing a unified view of realty—including pioneers in consciousness, environment, sustainability, holistic healing, and the cutting edges of integrative theory. You’ll recognize the names and stories of many of your favorite teachers, authors and celebrities.

THE GREAT COMING TOGETHER

ARE WE EXPERIENCING A “GREAT COMING TOGETHER”?

“The view that any teaching that would divide us can’t be true might be considered a credo of modern interspirituality and the evolutionary consciousness movement. Self-evident, it emerges from nearly all the recent literature of interreligious discussion…..

Brother Teasdale said that the true interspiritual discussion via the unconditional lens of the heart could underpin a new era in interreligious discussion….

Groups such as the Snowmass Initiative, the Monastic Inter-Religious Dialogue and the Contemplative Alliance regularly brought together some of the world’s most well known contemplatives and mystics for face-to-face dialogue. As Teasdale had predicted, the effect of one-on-one meetings among respected spiritual leaders was becoming a powerful leaven for understanding and recognition around the globe.”

[Read more in TCIA about the pioneering inter-religious dialogues that have led to the deep mutual understands across our spiritual traditions now understood by modern interspirituality]

Where Does the Great Coming Together Take Us?

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES?

“Hoping for a culmination of this Great Coming Together, we may think something is possible. But when we look more carefully, it simply might not be. Philosophers have been onto this for a long time, and the flaw in the original formulation gives the predicament its name: the “double standard fallacy” or “double-speak dilemma.”

Religion and science both face this dilemma. The new physics has had to confront it for several decades as it formulated it theories of the elusive quantum realms. A shared solution to his dilemma is part of the anthropological leap forward being asked of Homo sapiens at this moment in our evolution….”

“…The double-speak dilemma facing the worlds religions regards whether “Religious Pluralism”, as a contradiction in terms since most religions are by nature exclusive in their beliefs, makes a unified positive role for religion in the world impossible.”

[Read in TCIA about the central dilemma that confronts all attempts at holistic approaches to either science or religion– how to create a simultaneous OK’ness for seemingly opposite views and beliefs. Read how quantum physics has approached it and what that might teach spirituality and the religions]

The Solution: a Challenge as Old as Archimedes

ARE THERE PIONEERS NONE OF US EVER HEARD ABOUT?

“Long before Brother Teasdale coined the word “interspiritual,” a little-known group of “religious foundationalists” were getting their message out. Their medium was mostly theological journals, so the message didn’t reach the wider public and enter the popular literature of the evolutionary consciousness movement.”

[Read in TCIA about little know attempts after Vatican II to reach many of the understandings of today’s modern interspiritual movement; even Brother Teasdale could not refer to these in his books as these discussions had been silenced by the church officials; paradoxically, many pioneers of the interspiritual movement were from religions that were working against it]

The Wiener in the Warp Drive

WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY OF GLOBAL HOLISM? ARE FINANCIAL AND BANKING SYSTEMS ALREADY RIGGED FOR THE BENEFIT OF JUST A FEW? AND STACKED AGAINST THE CHANCE OF A JUST AND EGALITARIAN WORLD?

“The wiener in the warp drive of today’s natural evolution toward higher ethos for our advancing species may well be the world’s financial and banking communities. Why this is the case is something most people are unaware of.”

[Read TCIA’s accounts, and those from the new academic field “The Cognitive Science of Religion”, concerning how the modern shift of wealth and the political power into the hands of just a few is one of the greatest threats to our species survival; could the greed of the financial elite actually bring the planet down?]